Alexander Hug (front, centre), deputy head for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe's monitoring mission in Ukraine, stands with members of his team on the way to the MH17 site on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters

But fighting is continuing around the crash site despite the announcement of a day-long pause in fighting.

On the hilltops surrounding the site, locals watched the sky fill with smoke as seven or more battles broke up the scene in front of them. There were no signs of the ceasefire announced by Ukraine on Thursday night.

Advertisement

It appears the Ukrainian army moved in from the north at dawn and are attempting to push the rebels south and west. There is chaos on the rebel front lines - a bus shrouded in bed sheets with red crosses painted on raced toward Shakhtersk.

Outside the town, a rebel fighter named "Angel" said 30 or 40 people had been killed or wounded in fighting overnight. Contrary to seeming blanket support for the rebel fight, mother-of-two Tatiana Martinova, 32, pleaded as she watched the struggle for control of the crash site, "I want this war to stop".

On the road towards the crash site, villages and fields were deserted. Harvesting ground to a halt as everyone stayed indoors avoiding the fighting. A truckie evacuated children from the village near where MH17's cockpit landed, yelling as he passed, "everything is on fire!".

Despite the announcement of a ceasefire, the sound of gunfire and artillery can still be heard.

A 24-hour repreive - if it occurs - is meaningless in terms of work that needs to be done. The Australian and Dutch teams need access on a daily basis over a period of weeks and without missiles zinging about the neighbourhood and over their heads.

"No one has come to see. Yesterday we lived peacefully in the Donetsk People's Republic," one local said. "We think we're still in the republic," said another as he sipped a beer in a local cafe.

A loyal villager claims to have counted 146 tanks, APCs and other military hardware in a Ukrainian column that transited a road close to the village shortly after dawn.

In the face of seeming advances by the Ukrainian forces it still had not dawned on villagers that perhaps they no longer lived in the so-called Donetsk People's Republic.

In Zhdanivka, a small town near where MH17 crashed, locals are panic-buying and there are queues down the road for petrol. Men on scooters hold jerry cans between their legs, rationed to 10 litres each. Rebel fighters and their vehicles are allowed to jump the queue.

Signs of the nearby battle were evident in the town. A sedan hand-painted in military camouflage towed a broken down ambulance.

The ceasefire announcement followed a plea from the UN for a truce to allow a stalled probe into the downing of Malaysian flight MH17 to go ahead.

"We have taken a decision not to conduct military operations on this so-called 'day of quiet'," military spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky said, adding that the move was in response to an appeal by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to halt fighting.